Entrepreneurs’ Day

Entrepreneurship was the focus of an exciting new initiative at Loreto Kirribilli as Year 9 students were given an insight into the world of business and how ideas are developed.

Year 9 students were the special invitees to the Entrepreneurs’ Day – enterprise and innovation forum, where they took part in a planned series of activities, workshops, guest speaker appearances and collaborative work focused on entrepreneurship.

The day aimed to create opportunities, establish networks and develop capabilities and enterprise skills to be nurtured by all key learning areas at the school and through strategic partnerships within and beyond the Loreto network.

Principal Mrs Anna Dickinson said the event was a great example of the school’s commitment to ensuring students were future ready.

“The pace of change that has been happening in the world is quite extraordinary. Children in our school will live in the 22nd Century and it is about preparing students to be future ready with the ability to thrive and to lead in this future world.”

Mr Rob Magner, Social Science teacher and event organiser, said,

“The purpose of the day was to develop an inspiration for, passion and understanding of enterprise and entrepreneurship and how it may fit into the students’ present and future lives. This was developed through engaging workshops with real world individuals who could share and discuss their stories, together with workshops on ideation and agile thinking which actively engaged the girls in real industry processes.”

The girls heard from a range of inspirational speakers and ex-students on how they could create and make their own enterprise through their interest areas and values. The impressive panel of speakers included Georgie Drury (’94), founder of MySpringDay, Nicole Noye (’84), Chief Executive Officer at Collective Wellness Group, Simone Longworth (’11), CEO of Birthday Fairy, Briella Brown (’12), Co-founder and Marketing Director of Your Closet and Avant Studio, Isabelle Kohout (’16), Team Leader Project Everest Adventures, Jessica Woodward (’12), Human Resources Executive at Dyson and Belinda Lucas, Gender and Social Inclusion Advisor, Impact Private Sector Partnerships at Palladium.

The day ended with a mini-agile ideation session where students in like-minded interest areas broadly based on faculties, ideated on a key problem and collaborated to put forward a solution.

The students were enthusiastic about what they had learned from the day and what they took away from the interaction with entrepreneurs saying,

“…the speakers made it seem like becoming an entrepreneur was something achievable…being able to have discussions with real entrepreneurs and businesswomen and getting practical advice and ideas was just invaluable. They answered our questions and we felt we could really relate to them… the speakers really made me think that anything is possible and that what we do in our lifetime can change, what we want to do now might not be anything like what we end up doing and it is important to be able to recognise that.”